Another Dive into Green Stuff: Seams and Such

I have moved on from sculpting rocks.  The original reason for the dive into green stuff was to be able to mount the space marine jump packs with enough of a gap to allow for the shoulder pauldrons to fit when the character is lifting the weapon up. I found that to support the raised arms, the jump packs had to be tilted back a bit and there wouldn't be enough surface contact to create a strong bond.  This is exactly what green stuff is supposed to fix.

I also wanted to learn how to use the stuff for smaller seams as well, such as the gaps between the two halves of the torso for the veteran sergeant, and the two halves of 2 plastic jump packs.

I think I did a pretty good job with the interface between the jump pack and torso for the veteran sergeant.  I even added some texture to simulate connection cables/joints.  I didn't get pictures of the metal miniatures but there I just went a bit more basic and kinda just extended the block from the back of the torso.

Using the sculpting tools I feel I was able to get the green stuff into the recesses and flattened and smoothed on the various surfaces of the jet pack pretty well.  

On the torso, which was actually the first thing I tried, I think the visible areas were pretty good, but I could have done a bit better job around the gorget.  Luckily, with the head in place, all of this area should be well hidden.

Finally, to add a bit more 'bling' to the sergeant, I used another bit from the Ultramarines upgrade sprue and attached an ultima to the jump pack.  I think they intend for it to mount on top like the final on a flag, but I prefer to avoid things like that where possible (already enough things that can break off) so instead I wanted to mount it flush.

Next Dive into Green Stuff: Tactical Rocks

Using green stuff for fixing gaps and such was a fairly easy way to get started and learn how to work with it.  Next I used it for creating 'tactical rocks.'  This required a bit more skill in sculping rocks, but since rocks are usually blobs, it didn't take much skill.  Obviously real rocks of different types have different properties - river rocks are generally smooth, shale or similar sedimentary rock are rough and have 'fissile' characteristics (splitting flat), and so on.  So I didn't achieve any particular uniform rock-like characteristics - I just made blobs, but I think with some mud, paint, and ballast I can make them a bit more rock like.

This tactical rock didn't quite get centered under the foot, but I felt it was all right since maybe sometimes these transhumans have more things to worry about on the battlefield than posting with the foot squarely on the rock, you know, gotta make sure that hammer is just so for the warcry.  Pretty much all of the other minis in this squad needed a similar rock and got most of those centered, so this guy has character, maybe he's earned the name 'Shifty' or something.

Here we had some extra so I made some tactical mud to go with the tactical rock, which is of course hiding the bit of pewter supporting the foot and connecting it to the base slot tab.  I think this rock looks fine and its got a split in the front.  Using the silicone sculpting tools I was able to add texture and think it looked good enough. The 'mud' will probably get covered by paint-mud or ballast, but at least it will add a bit of dimension.

First Dive into Green Stuff

So far I have managed to avoid using green stuff.  I think I was able to get by owing to the design of Space Marine models - the armor naturally hides the arm joints under the shoulders pretty well, and I wasn't doing anything spectacular with poses.  Also the quality of the metal miniatures is pretty good.

But for the Vanguard Veterans it was time to learn for a few reasons.  1) First just to learn and improve my skills. 2) Also, I wanted to magnetize the arms to allow for different weapon loadouts and 3) In order to support some arm poses the backpacks had to come out away from the body a bit to fit the shoulders.

So I started with the arms.  In drilling out the space for the magnets, the plastic was pretty soft for the Foredom drill, and so some of the holes were oversized.

I found working with green stuff was fine for the most part for this type of work where I am not sculpting anything in particular except flat joints.  Nevertheless, I picked up a set of 5 "ColourShaper" brand size 0 Clay/Wax/polymer clay silicone tipped sculpting tools.  Silicone is really important because the stuff doesn't stick to it.  While mixing it with my hands I just dipped my finger tips in a bit of water to keep it from sticking - that worked ok.

The results were pretty good - it seems the magnets are in there and fit for the most part.  Definitely there is room for improvement in the future as some magnets were a bit too deep (and so I should have put green stuff behind them) while others stick out a bit.  I tried to pair up arms with bodies such that protruding magnets would be paired with sunken ones.